Is it Always in the Blood?

This song expresses something lodged in my heart and more so as I'm looking toward the end of my life. Friends and family are going to their rest right and left as I get older. Many I look forward to seeing again when Jesus comes. At the same time I worry that the dust and wear and tear of life has left some old wounds in my family that stubbornly refuse to heal. I have a son and brother who have gone on ahead to their rest. Both I'm sure I will see again. Both of them were close and I knew their hearts. We'll all do a little happy dance when we find ourselves together again looking up to see Him coming in the clouds.

Like the song talks about, the difficulties we run into in life can distance us from those we love. With family, you hope these things can "wash out in the water." At the same time you fear that what will wash out is the bond of blood that once held you close together. 

Things sadly can happen, hurts deliberate or inadvertent push us apart. We don't talk for years. We stop getting together at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Sometimes that's because of distance. Sometimes it's ruffled feathers or old offenses. It might be politics. It might that someone can't stand your religion.

It's heartbreaking that people who loved each other once can find themselves standing off to avoid stirring up old hurts. Myself, I can't think of anyone I share blood with that I could not throw my arms around and be thrilled to see. I fear that it's not shared. Perhaps I'm such an awful person I can't be forgiven. If so, God forgive me. I've tried to be kind and fair and decent to everyone I come into contact with. I certainly hope that love and forgiveness is "In the Blood".

Someone once said that family is the place you can go for refuge and they can never turn you away. I hope that's true. It's certainly true for Sheila and I. Each day I pray that God leads us all home. I have big plans for family get-togethers in The Earth Made New. I plan to build a schooner and take everybody sailing. Then we'll have a big potluck and a jam session. We'll drag out guitars, banjos, harmonicas, flutes, drums, mandolins and a washtub bass and sing wonderful old songs we remember and new ones we've made up.

Forgive me guys if I've offended. I never meant any harm.

© 2022 by Tom King

You Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd (for various reasons)

Roger Miller wrote a whole bunch of songs I really enjoy. This quirky songwriter did some really happy stuff including stuff for the soundtrack of Disney's animated  "Robin Hood". His hits were a perky lot including, King of the Road, England Swings, Chug-a-Lug, Walkin'' in the Sunshine, Dang Me, Do Whack a Do, and Ooh Da Lally,

Well you get the idea. 

Roger's wry take on country music was unique back in the 60s when everybody seemed desperate to take themselves sooooooo seriously.

So, enjoy this gentle, light and funny musical voice singing in the midst of riots, upheavals, assassinations, and pointless wars the ruling power didn't really want to win.

Tom King

 

 

 

 

 

Theme from Rawhide - Blues Brothers

 

The Blues Brothers came out of Saturday Night Live - a retro blues band featuring Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi. In this sequence from the movie, Jake and Elwood and the boys wind up at a cowboy bar trying to make a few bucks to keep gas in the car by replacing the band that had been originally booked. When the set went south, they switch seemlessly to the first cowboy song they can think of - the theme to the TV show Rawhide. They pull it off too and end the set singing Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man." I love that the stage is screened in with chicken wire and there's a bullwhip hanging on the wall. The owner says they have both kinds of music, country AND western. I love it. Kinda highlights the advantages of a musician being versatile............or any independent entrepreneur for that matter. Give the customer what he wants, that's my motto.

Tom

Lookin' Out My Backdoor

I've always been fond of porches. This Creedence Clearwater Revival song is kind of my "sittin' on the back porch" theme song.  Meanwhile, I "...got to sit down, take a rest on the porch." Now what happens next is somewhat ambiguous. It could be a straightforward reverie or something more chemically induced, but I prefer to think of the tambourines and elephants bit as a daydream. So here's CCR front man, John Fogarty, live with some back porch music for a Monday morning....

Now wasn't that fun?

Tom 

You Done Stomped on My Heart

Here's one from the inimitable Mason Williams of "Classical Gas" fame.  We used to sit around on the boat dock and sing this when some gal had stomped on our hearts. Only John Denver could deliver a line as great as "You know you just sorta, stomped on my aorta" with a straight face.

I thought this time out, I'd throw out one of those "she done you wrong" songs as a kind of throwback to my days of being dumped with stunning regularity by a stable of attractive women (including the one I married who also dumped me but felt so sorry for me she couldn't make it stick).

It was a tossup choosing between "Stomped" or "Homemade Dummy" the folk version of Louis Armstrong's "Dumb Dumb Dummy".  I need to make a video of that one because I can't find the campfire version anywhere.

Here's John singing Mason's monumentally pitiful "You Done Stomped on My Heart."

Benson Arizona - Theme to Dark Star

Okay back to the odd we go. There was an odd little Sci-Fi movie made in 1974 during the pre Star Wars era by John Carpenter, who later made some really disturbing horror and sci-fi movies. This low-budget gem is a quirky mess, but the opening theme song is unique. It's a C&W space sailor's lament about a love lost to the theory of relativity.  He left home a few years back and left his girl behind. Now he's still a young man and back on Earth, she's an old lady and there's no going back. Meanwhile the crew of the spaceship Dark Star is going a little nuts blowing up planets and talking to their dead captain and a self-destructive bomb. I included a clip of the whole opening sequence. Best Sci-Fi Country Western song ever.

Weird I know.

Tom

If I Had a Boat (Again)

Drawing by Corrie Chiswell

I stumbled upon this song, If I Had a Boat by Lyle Lovett, about the same time I discovered The Superman Song and the odd works of Robert Earl Keen whom you will meet later. Lyle Lovett is a strange little man who was, even more strangely, married for a time to actress Julia Roberts. The demands of careers ended the marriage after two years, but the two remain friends, however that works. I like this song because it combines two of my favorite things - boats and horses. It also mentions Roy Rogers, Tonto and the Lone Ranger and posits what it would be like to be lightning, which makes this song doubly unique. As you will soon become aware, I like songs which are unique - even odd if truth be known.

I spent two years of my life starting and running an equestrian program for emotionally disturbed youth and kids with disabilities. I spent 5 to 7 hours a day riding and caring for 20 oatburners. I taught fifty some-odd kids how to feed them, brush them, saddle them and ride them.  I also learned a bit of the farrier's art (hoof maintenance on that job.  The most valuable lesson I learned from trimming horse's hooves was that if you pick up a horse's foot and start trimming the hoof, after a time the horse decides you are such a nice guy for doing this that you won't mind them leaning a quarter ton or so of their horsey selves against your back. It says something about something, I'm not sure what - possibly dependency. I'm not sure. This is why professional farriers are such big burly guys, though, and possibly why my knees are in the shape they are currently in.

I took a Red Cross Aquatic School course to become a canoeing instructor back when I was a younger man and working summers at Lone Star Camp. It confirmed me in my other passion of all things "boat". By the time I was 54 I owned a catamaran, six canoes, and a motorboat. Then life took a wrong turn and I lost them all and my transportation to get to an actual lake.

I miss my horses and my boats. I dream about horses and boats, but, for now, I don't get to enjoy either. Perhaps God wants me to long for heaven where I can spend an eternity building boats that will carry me, my dogs and my horses (and the wife if she wants to go) out on the ocean. 

All that said, here's Lyle Lovett and the oddly beautiful "If I Had a Boat".    - Tom